History with Politics

Why study BA History with Politics at Goldsmiths

This programme is an innovative and interdisciplinary exploration into how social, cultural, and political institutions, decisions, and events have shaped societies and nations around the world.

• Rather than focusing on chronology or strictly demarcated historical periods, combining history and politics encourages and facilitates explorations and analyses of key issues, controversies, themes, and debates.

• The study, analysis and understanding of the past is as important today as it has ever been.

• Understanding past societies fosters emotional intelligence and allows us to appreciate the diversity and adaptability of human life.

• Understanding our pasts can help us to shape our futures and, crucially, help us shape those futures intelligently, insightfully, fairly, and with compassion, contributing towards equality, diversity and social justice.

• Our innovative approaches to the study of politics, peel back the formal veneer of political parties and institutions to reveal the major ideological, economic, social, and cultural conflicts

• By exploring politics in this in-depth manner, you will gain a comprehensive understanding of our world.

• We cross boundaries between the traditional and the more radical understandings of political phenomena.

• Politics is much more than simply what happens in parliaments, it pervades the whole of society, domestically and internationally.

Course Modules

Year 1
In your first year, you'll take the following compulsory modules:

• Global Connections

• Power, Emotions and Environment

• Reading and Writing History

• Historical Controversies

• Academic Skills for the Social Sciences/Humanities

Year 2
Your second year will give you the chance to broaden your intellectual horizons, and have more freedom over what you study.

You will take these compulsory modules:

• History at Work

• The Goldsmiths Project

You will choose 2 from the following History modules:

• Communication, Propaganda and Power

• Radicalism and Revolution

• Race, Bodies and Empire

• Environment, Disease and the Anthropocene

You will choose 2 from the following Politics modules:

• US Politics and Foreign Policy

• Global Governance and World Order

• Modern Britain: Politics from 1979 - today

• Modern Political Theory

Finally, you'll choose two modules from options provided by History. These optional modules (worth 30 credits) can be replaced by modules in another discipline at Goldsmiths.

Some of the options may include:

• Art and Power

• Black and British: A Critical History

• Sex, Drugs and Colonial Control: Race, Vice and Deviance in the British Empire

• Islam and the West

• A History of Violence

Year 3
Your final year will be spent developing your specialist interests and knowledge.

You will take the following 3 compulsory modules or one Special Subject module worth 60 credits from a list of University of London intercollegiate Group III modules.

• Researching and Writing: Crafting and Presenting Your Work

• Special Subject Dissertation

• Future Histories: Skills for the Twenty-First Century

You will choose one special subject module worth 15 credits:

• Pleasure, Power and the Raj: Leisure, Society and Social Networks in 19th Century India

or

• Global Cold War

Optional modules

You'll choose 3 (45 credits) modules from a list of History and Politics options, taking at least 30 credits of Politics modules within this total.

15 credits of optional History or Politics modules can be replaced by a module in another discipline at Goldsmiths.

Module options may include:

• Witchcraft, Diabolic Possession and the Occult in Early Modern Europe

• WARGAMES: Fighting, Narrating and Understanding Modern Battle

• Workers of the World Unite: Marxism, Modernity and Revolution in the Twentieth Century

• How Democracy Dies: the Rise of the Nazis and the German Republic, 1918-33

• From Emancipations to Nations: Histories of Caribbean Decolonisation

• Rebellions in Paradise: Caribbean Emancipations 1791-1914

• Heresy and the Apocalypse

Please note that due to staff research commitments not all of the modules may be available every year.